It is, by any conventional measure, the strangest release of the summer - and, this year, that’s saying something. On the surface, Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make! sounds like a lost fragment from a 1970s horror anthology, a title that evokes candlelit crypts and the rustle of bat wings. But the accompanying metadata - a runtime of exactly three minutes, shot on 3 x Super 8mm (digitally transferred), with no dialogue, no known cast, and a genre stamped “unknown” - tells a different story. This is not a narrative feature. It is a cryptic, fleeting transmission from director Yonay Boix, arriving in theaters and on digital platforms on August 20, 2026, with all the fanfare of a whisper in a crowded room.

The release date itself is the first gesture of defiance. August 20 falls on a Thursday, a dead zone in the theatrical calendar, a day typically reserved for discount screenings and arthouse leftovers. USA Film News has confirmed the film will be available both in select repertory cinemas and as a standalone digital rental on major streaming platforms, though without any traditional studio backing, its availability will feel more like a scavenger hunt than a wide rollout. Expect it to pop up in midnight slots, as a pre-show curiosity at genre festivals, or buried in the “experimental” section of your favorite VOD service. For a three-minute silent film, the window to catch it is deliberately brief - though, paradoxically, the brevity is the point. You will not need to plan around it. You will need to stumble upon it.

Release Date & Where to Watch

Mark your calendars, or don’t. The official release date is today, August 20, 2026. The film will be available as a digital rental on major platforms - think Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, and Vimeo On Demand - with a nominal fee that feels more like a museum ticket than a movie ticket. For the more adventurous, there are simultaneous screenings at a handful of independent cinemas in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, often programmed as part of “short film tapas” nights or experimental showcases. There is no physical media release announced, nor will there likely be. The film exists as a digital ghost, a compressed memory of celluloid grain, viewable on any screen but best experienced in a dark room with the volume off - since, technically, the volume is always off. Given its runtime, you could watch it three times during a single Starbucks order. But the distribution strategy suggests Boix wants a more deliberate ritual: sit down, close the door, and let three minutes stretch into an eternity.

Cast & Crew

Here, the metadata offers almost nothing. The cast is listed as “unknown,” which is either a radical act of anonymity or a practical reality - the performers, if any, may be non-actors, children, or figures so obscured by shadow and grain that they are functionally unidentifiable. We do know the film’s sole credited figure: director Yonay Boix. For those unfamiliar, Boix is not a household name, and a quick scan of film databases yields a sparse filmography - a handful of experimental shorts, a few gallery installations, and a persistent fascination with obsolete formats. This is not a director chasing festival laurels; this is a visual poet working with the equivalent of a pocket notebook. The technical credits are equally opaque. The specification “3 x super 8mm (digital)” suggests the film was shot on three separate reels of Super 8, each perhaps 50 feet long, giving roughly 2 minutes and 45 seconds of footage, then digitized and assembled into a 3-minute cut. No cinematographer, editor, or composer is credited. The film is silent, so no score. This is Boix alone, with a camera and an idea, trading the safety of collaboration for the purity of a singular vision.

Story & What to Expect

Let’s be clear: there is no “story” in the traditional sense. The title, taken from a line in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, conjures images of nocturnal revelry, of unseen voices harmonizing in the dark. But Boix is not adapting Stoker. The “children of the night” here are not vampires. They are, literally and figuratively, children - perhaps filmed at dusk, perhaps in a playground after hours, perhaps in a forest where the light filters through leaves like stained glass. The film is silent, so any “music” is implied, a phantom symphony created in the viewer’s mind. The Super 8 aesthetic means heavy grain, flickering exposure, soft focus, and the occasional splice where one reel meets another. Expect no narrative arc, no dialogue cards, no character development. Instead, anticipate a sequence of images: feet running on wet pavement, a hand reaching toward a window, a face half-lit by a streetlamp, maybe a dog barking silently at the moon. The three-minute runtime is both a constraint and a liberation - there is no time for exposition, only for sensation. Boix is asking you to surrender to the materiality of the image, to feel the texture of film stock itself, to remember a childhood dusk you may never have experienced.

Why It's Worth Watching

Because it is the opposite of everything else playing this month. We are awash in three-hour spectacles, in CGI armies and score-heavy epics. Listen to them is a corrective, a splash of cold water. It is a film that does not ask for your attention, only your presence. In a world where streaming algorithms reward length and cliffhangers, this is a work that respects your time by scorning it - it is over before you have fully adjusted your posture, yet it lingers in the way a half-remembered dream does. The silence is not an absence but a pressure, forcing you to notice the hum of your own room, the creak of your chair. The Super 8 grain is not a nostalgic affectation but a tactile reminder that cinema is made of light and chemistry, not just pixels. And the title, with its ominous comma and exclamation point, is a dare: will you listen? Will you try to hear the music that isn’t there? For three minutes, you might find yourself leaning forward, straining for a sound that will never come. That tension, that beautiful futility, is the film’s quiet triumph. It is not a landmark. It will not be nominated for anything. But on a Thursday in late August, it might just be the most honest thing you watch all year.